Friday, July 31, 2009

A HOLOGRAM LETTER FROM KATEY


New visitors to the chronicles from the future may first wish to visit the past, by reading the earlier hologramletters. (see the older listings on the right, go to the bottom and click the link to the earlier hologramletters)

NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.


Today would there be a message in a bottle he wondered? Had his transmission power the day before been strong enough to contact others and would they fear making contact with him? He turned on the horizontal hologram screen and waited. Nothing……………there did seem to be a strange flicker of light intermittently; or was it just his imagination, brought on by hope that there may be word of others? It faded as fast as it had appeared, like the colours of a rainbow he remembered from years ago. That was something he hadn’t thought would change with global warming. They rarely formed now thanks to mans’ tampering and geoengineering of the atmosphere in 2015. The sulphurous rains now when they came left no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; only bare and poisoned earth.

Again the screen flickered, but this time the image materialised clearly; he smiled recognising the face of Katey.


February 3rd 2030


Hi Bob:

It has been several years old friend. Still, sometimes, late at night I think back to those days: trying to figure out how and why voices like yours and mine, along with millions of others failed to win the day. At times, I’ve the tendency to blame those with lesser minds. Although this is just anger and frustration, something that has become a part of my life ever since Greenland’s ice broke up and came crashing into the ocean. Yes, it is beneath me; the pent up rage although - as I give it no outlet - bubbles to the service. It would be so easy to blame people like, well, the ‘Others’ as Anthony calls them. We know better, although, you and I. We know the blame lies in the complacency of the opulent and the greed of the powerful status quo. Somehow they failed to understand that there was a better and easier way. Your friend, Anthony, has put forth some amazing arguments to me on how Industrial Hemp could’ve created an economic boom and actually reduced the amount of carbon we had emitted, preventing Rapid Climate Change, or at least given us a chance to. I plan on letting him know that the Kush seeds for medical use are going to be released. He and Vicky can start them in a mini horticulture lab down by my bee hive experiment. I will demand that close and strict guidelines be applied to the usage of the crop. The ‘Others’ are lazy enough without having them zoned out of their collective little minds all day long.

Bob you really upset me! I was the only person here who managed to change my persona when the rescue of Doc fell through. I really miss her. She would’ve probably been conducting a physiological profile on your friend. I went into an automatic mode where everything had to be by the book, when she died. Funny really, as with Doc’s passing and the emergence of the Jay Squad into the compound, the book went out the window. Thanks are in order although, Anthony and I are getting to know each other and the compound needs this odd collection of souls.

I am curious Bob. Did you ever meet Anthony in person? He is very unique, shall we say somewhat eccentric Old Man. Robin and I have been doing a thorough search on him. What we have found is at odds with his gruff demeanour. Twenty years before I was born, he was writing letters to a Midwestern newspaper, The Hawkeye Tribune. We came across one quite by accident, while searching a national data base of libraries and this opened the door to finding hundreds. A self described liberal hawk, talk about a contradiction in terms. He showed militant competence and was quick to respond with a call for force when America’s interests were threatened. At the same time, he exhibited a shrewd insight into the failed policies of U.S. foreign policy, policies that inevitably almost always led to U.S. intervention in foreign lands. Over the years his writings changed, from the devout humanitarian arose an eco-warrior who seemed to despise humanity. Constantly at odds with himself, he seems beset by dichotomies of his own creation. He once wrote in a column of his called Earth Line:

“Retreating from mankind to live a life along the river ecosystem and commune with nature. I have not abandoned humanity, just the people who compose it.”

Robin thinks he was using humanity as a reference to the humane attributes of our species that we have not reached. His writings are full of lines that are vague in meaning, leaving the reader to contemplate matters for themselves. There is a segment of his letters, which goes on for years, where almost everything he writes ends in a question, a time period where the closing sentence completely reverses the concept of the entire letter and reaches for a higher level of consciousness. Almost as if he was writing to two audiences at the same time. Doc would’ve either admired the man or found him to be certifiable, maybe both, I’m not sure.

After your book came out, I took some heat from my colleagues. You know of course the pattern of acceptance within the scientific community. In private conversations although, the same people who would scrutinize me in public acknowledged me in private and sought out additional information. Shortly after the concept for the doomsday bunkers came into play, I was approached by the President’s Science Advisor, and put on the committee to help create it.

So sad that people would not listen to our message when they still had a chance. Most choose to laugh off the warnings. Given the fact, that the amount of information continued to stockpile. As did the amount of methane, carbon and other gasses that were collecting in the atmosphere. I picked up your book last night and read the following words.

“In northern Siberia lakes are releasing methane at a rate five times higher than previously estimated. Studies by Katey Walter, and International Polar Year postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, reported in Nature in 2006 that her team’s calculations increase the present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands by between 10 and 63 percent. She explains: “This newly recognized source of methane is so far not included in climate models. Estimates suggest the area has 500 gigatons (1,100 trillion pounds) of carbon, largely in the form of ancient dead plant material. Walter suggest: ‘Permafrost models predict significant thaw of permafrost during this century, which means that yedoma permafrost is like a time bomb waiting to go off – as it continues to thaw, tens of thousands of teragrams of methane can be released to the atmosphere enhancing climate change.’”

That seems like another lifetime ago Bob. I wish you well and have hopes that something good can come, yet, from the disaster mankind had thrust upon the planet.

Your friend,
Katey AKA Patricia, for now, and forever forward.

_____

She had indeed done much to wake up those that could have snatched victory from the hands of defeat that was now a broken world, he thought. She was still striving to make a better place, even if only for a few at the Alaskan HAARP compound. Her work went on, but now at least, the few she could talk to were actually listening to her wisdom.

There were many images in her memories he could view for the first time; as he drifted through them on the memory screens watching her thoughts, he could see an equal balance of good and bad. Katey was much the lonelier for the absence of Doc.

Friday, July 17, 2009

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE


New visitors to the chronicles from the future may first wish to visit the past, by reading the earlier hologramletters. (see the older listings on the right, go to the bottom and click the link to the earlier hologramletters)

NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.


February 2030.

He stood there knowing there were others with hopes and dreams; with stories to tell of their lives over the troubled years of the second and third decades of the 21st Century.

He turned to the monitors to send out a broadcast to any that would receive his hologramletter.

Today would be a day to reach out to those who were not in directed contact, or needed to tell their story of challenge, inspiration and survival in an isolated world of change. He turned the gauge to its maximum transmission power to reach across the world as it now was, and said:


Who is out there? Is there anyone out there?

Send me your ‘message in a bottle’, so that I might hear ‘your story’ of now and make contact.




This is a very special letter in the series where you can leave your comment (your message in a bottle) as to your thoughts of now and how they may be in 2030. What may become the reality of all our futures in 2030?
Please leave here YOUR ‘Message in a bottle’

Monday, July 13, 2009

MANS' ILLOGICAL SLEEPWALK


New visitors to the chronicles from the future may first wish to visit the past, by reading the earlier hologramletters. (see the older listings on the right, go to the bottom and click the link to the earlier hologramletters)

NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.


February 3rd 2030.


He walked to the outgoing hologramletter screen and switched on the console. He wanted to share his earlier reflections of the day on what the alternative future by 2050 would have looked like had man continued with its illogical industrial sleepwalk, and its business as usual pace, even without the climate crisis impacts of pollution of the atmosphere. There had been many environmental activists like him on the climate impacts of daily life in the industrial world. But there had been scant activism pointing to the inevitable outcome of eating the planet to death of resources to feed the industrial model in place.

The climate naysayer could continue to spread doubt or question the outcome to man of the pollution of the atmosphere and thereby delay action by those that could have stopped it. But no one could have doubted the ultimate outcome of mans’ actions to rid the planet of the resources on which the system of life and living had been constructed. Only a few had spoken out on the need to de-industrialise the world to a new model. If more voices had been added to this cause, a third revolution may have replaced the industrial past; as it had replaced the agricultural age of man. Had more lobbied for this ‘New age of Nature Revolution’ and de-invented to reinvent the future, it may have moved the world away from the edge of darkness it was now in.

Hello my friends,

To answer the questions of why we had continued on the illogical sleepwalk of the industrial age, isn’t now ultimately needed, as the freefall of resource extinction we had committed ourselves to in the first two decades of the 21st century, has now been overtaken by the catastrophic climate chaos that devastated mankind in the third decade. But I still reflect on it as I had called it in the book, a system ‘Designed for Demise’.

We had lived with a system of finite resource depletion that was leading to the inevitable outcome. The very building blocks of the industrial age had been consumed by a mere generation or two. Resources laid down over billions of years had been profligately consumed without any consideration for the future. All eyes had been closed to the future as if it was to go on indefinitely, with what was taken for granted to feed the system of industrial life, being available to go on; as we had lived in the system, all our conscious lives. Who had designed it, and what was its flaw? Man.

Had climate change not overtaken the elimination of all finite resources, on which the system of the modern world relied, by 2050 the global infrastructure would have collapsed any way. Even in 2000, most if not all base elements needed for the system had peaked and were going into extinction. As the developing nations aspired to the standards of consumption the developed countries enjoyed, competition for a greater piece of the resource pie accelerated the freefall to resource extinction. So the whole system on which industry and its political backers portrayed as infinite, was no more than smoke and mirrors. Even though it was illogical to consider resources to feed the system would be there forever, it would in the first two decades be for the politicians, “Not in my term of Office” for industry “Not of relevance to this years financial return to share holders”. And for the general population “Not something that affects me and mine today”. I had written:


We were on a freefall to the unknown and the ground was rushing up to meet us, with some already seeing it. Like all freefalls, we were accelerating as we descended.

In the chapter ‘Designed for Demise’ I had opened with:


Our mortality is the thing we understand from the time we become aware. We willall die. This is our underlying strength and overriding weakness. The only lasting legacy will be from the children we have who will carry our memory after our time has run out.

Man’s design flaw was built in. You and I cannot be sustained forever. Is this why we have designed all other things to follow the same principle? Designed for demise. Take care of today, tomorrow will look after itself.

If we accept this, maybe the concept of sustainability, of an infinite future, could not have been built into our endeavours, as we planned that future with our demise as the inevitable outcome. As we know we will certainly die, have we designed all other systems to follow us in the developed civilized world? Have we in effect designed end of life into all our activities?


And had continued with:


The model of developed and developing economic industry has a single and simple flaw. It was designed by man and designed for demise.

From the time in history when we changed from hunters and gatherers, we have designed out sustainability. We have discarded any guidance that was provided by nature, which is the model of sustainability, in favour of a redesigned manmade finite future.

We tell our children to share but we show them how not to. Finite resources means going, going, gone. But every industrialized process, every commercial practice, every economic activity, every consumption pattern, revolves around the depletion of finite resources until they are going, going, gone.

My observation had been:


From the time of the first unnatural activity design, we have continued to build on what is a basically flawed process. Even though we can look back and see the outcome for past civilizations whose over consumption of resources caused their ultimate extinction, we choose the same outcome. Our activities are not designed according to the laws and guidance of nature. Each of the cups, whatever the
resource, if finite, will run out—built in inevitability.

Had we started the process of man’s endeavour without knowledge of our own mortality, we may have emulated the natural system. Any future that has a sustainable future, not a finite one, needs to start with a complete redesign. We are good at looking back, not forward. We react to issues, not to seeing them coming.
It’s not our fault, just our training. Live for today, tomorrow never comes. Don’t worry about it, it may never happen.

But we do have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight on this. We can historically see where civilizations went wrong. We can now see a future, which unless we actually want one that is finite, we must change.

Everything I have has come from our collective finite resources. It’s nearly all extracted, milled, mined, distilled and depleted from fossil and finite resources, unsustainable and designed for demise.


I had listed some of the “designed for demise” flaws with 20/20 foresight available to all that were not committed to the continuing illogical sleepwalk of the 21st century as:


The business, economic model of ever increased return on investment,
indefinitely. Designed for infinite sustainability?

The developed and developing country’s drive for sustainable increases in GDP, exports, prosperity, and job growth. Designed for infinite sustainability, or designed for demise?

The short-term election of our political leaders and decision makers—Designed for sustainability of sound policy?

Manufacturing until we run out of resources—Designed for infinite sustainability?

Mining and extractive resource depletion?

Extraction and burning of fossil reserves?

Agriculture for an ever increasing global population—Designed for infinite sustainability?

Plant geneticists working for multinational corporations to genetically modify seeds for crops that will not produce viable seed for future crop plantings. Not only
unconscionable but deliberately designed for demise?

Political and social stability, for the developed industrial model, for a few, not
all?

Water resource depletion of fossil aquifers for current and increasing consumption—Designed for infinite sustainability?

Clearing of rainforests—Designed for infinite sustainability, or demise?

Polluting our waterways and oceans with industrial activities?

Polluting the air we breathe?

Raising the levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases—Designed for infinite sustainability, or designed for demise?

And had concluded the observation with:


It has not been our fault; we have just followed on from the lead we were given. But the future will be our fault, because we now have the indisputable luxury of 20/20 foresight.

We know the future outcome of continuing with “business as usual” and “living as usual” models. Demise!


So as I look out on the devastation that has overtaken mans' short history although the question is now academic with Mother Nature stepping in to halt mans’ folly of the industrial age. I recognise that the demise of the way of life of all human endeavours would have arrived at the door of all inevitably, as sustainability had been designed out. 2050 would have marked the inevitable rise and fall of man and the industrial model of life in the 21st century. Governments knew it, Industry knew it and logic knew it. The industrial age would have gone from cradle to grave in a mere 200 years of finite resources extinction.

So now my friends even though you now have much to trouble and torment you here in the first year of 2030, the few that are now remaining may have an old building block or two left, on which to construct sustainability with a focus on living within the bounds of the natural system. We can now redesign a system based on the principles of living with what can be provided infinitely, taking care of our needs, and no longer with greed focusing on our wants.


Until tomorrow… Stay safe – stay indoors. Much hope to you.